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Category: Hardware

I picked up a Vizio PQ65-F1 4K TV during the holiday sale season, and it’s a tremendous upgrade from our old LCD, an almost 10-year-old Sharp. The color and dynamic range are amazing and I don’t regret skipping OLED at all. I haven’t played with the built-in TV app platform at all, preferring instead to use an Apple TV 4K as the sole source device.

Sadly, TV’s continue to be anything but plug-and-play. For some reason the HDMI2 input does not work with Dolby Vision HDR (but works fine with HDR10). As far as I can tell this is not a limitation of the TV itself, so it must be a manufacturing defect. I wasted a lot of time isolating this problem. The TV itself has five HDMI inputs, and they’re not differentiated except that HDMI4 & HDMI5 require a minimum 1080P input, and HDMI1 supports the HDMI audio return channel (ARC).

Our Onkyo TX-NR545 receiver supports the latest HDMI/HDCP standards and HDR10 pass-through, but for some reason it cannot pass through Dolby Vision signals. This seems to just be a firmware limitation, but it’s an EOL product and Onkyo’s solution is to buy a new device. A workaround is to use HDMI ARC to pass audio from the TV to the receiver, and connect source devices directly to the TV. That works fine, but prevents using the latest audio formats (e.g., Dolby Atmos).

I’m still using a 3.0 audio setup, so I don’t care about Atmos right now, but it’s obnoxious to have to choose between having the latest audio standards and having the latest video standards (or buying a new receiver). There are some HDMI splitters (such as HDFury) that could work, but they’re 1/3 or more the price of a new receiver.

The TV works well as a dumb monitor; the Internet connection is completely optional. If connected to a network, it will update its firmware without asking. My current plan is to leave it on the network for home automation and Chromecast support, but to block its Internet access at the router.

I’ve been playing a lot with home automation recently, and in particular I’ve been installing a lot of cheap ESP8266-based Wi-Fi relays, such as the Sonoff Basic, Sonoff SV, Sonoff S31, Sonoff iFan02, and Shelly1, which have all been flashed to run the open-source Tasmota firmware. These communicate with Home Assistant through an MQTT message broker over Wi-Fi. Home Assistant, in turn, allows the devices to work with schedules, timers, voice-activated cylinders, and so on. With the exception of the Sonoff Basic, I would happily recommend these devices to anyone with some electrical knowledge and DIY skills.

One advantage of having automation-enabled lights in the kids rooms is being able to turn on their lights to help get them out of bed on school days. For that reason, I set up the ceiling fan in Lucas’s room with an iFan02 (replacing the Hunter RF control module), one of his floor lamps on an S31 and the other on a Basic.

Now he needed a convenient way to turn on/off the floor lamp and nightstand lamp without physically switching them off, which would prevent them from being turned on by automations.

Each of the buttons toggles the state of a different light. The LEGO parts were scavenged from a large parts bin. The buttons came from a local electronics shop. Inside is a Sonoff SV, powered by a re-purposed USB cable. The Sonoff SV was modified somewhat to make it fit in the small enclosure: I removed the relay and the side of the board carrying the relay outputs, and the header pins were bent at about a 45 degree angle to keep them out of the way of the pushbuttons. Power comes from an old iPhone USB charger.

Installing the buttons was probably the hardest part of the build, but that’s not to say it was difficult. I hit the center of the smooth-surface blocks with a punch and then drilled them handheld without any issues. The bore is slightly more than 1/2″, which required some extra trimming. The depth of the LEGO prevented use of the button mounting hardware, so I used hot glue to hold them in place.

Here you can see the Sonoff SV, trimmed to fit and relay removed. This was done to save space.

Internally, the buttons are connected to ground, with the other leg connected to a female header cable that plugs into the corresponding GPIO port. I used GPIO4, 5, and 14.

Inside the controller

The USB power cable is fed through a block with a hole in it. A zip tie is used internally for strain relief.

Here you can see the inside of the assembled unit. Everything barely fits.

Everything packed together

Moving onto the software side, this is how I configured the Sonoff SV module with Tasmota 6.3.0.8:

Sonoff Module Configuration

Finally, I had to configure it to toggle the other modules on and off with button presses. This doesn’t use Home Assistant at all; I used Tasmota rules to publish MQTT messages to the other devices directly. Home Assistant correctly observes their changed states automatically.

Tasmota supports a bunch of active rules at once, but they all end up concatenated together on one line. Ignore the line wrap below! This is the configuration I ended up using:

Our LG LFXS30766S refrigerator is broadcasting an open Wi-Fi access point. I’m sure it’s doing that so LG’s Android app can connect to it and deliver pairing instructions for another AP. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any way to disable this feature. LG: If you’re listening, nobody asked for this garbage. Making the door shelves adjustable would be pretty great, though. A $2,300 fridge should have adjustable shelves.

I also see LG recently posted a firmware update for this fridge to their website. There are no release notes; You need proprietary hardware to install it, and it requires fridge disassembly. Seriously? I hope it’s not needed to close a gaping security hole in that open Wi-Fi access point… No, that would be silly. They’re never going to fix those security holes.

I may end up looking for a service manual so I can try to physically disable the Wi-Fi.

The first custom lighting project in our new home will be under-cabinet lights in the kitchen. After researching various choices for high-CRI LED strips, I decided to purchase a reel from Flexfire LED’s for experimentation. I settled on the Ultrabright High CRI Series Warm White LED Strip Light.

Let me start by saying I’ve never purchased or played with LED strips before, but these are the real deal. I’ve played with demo strips at electronics stores, and the Flexfire strip is much brighter and the color is quite natural.

This product is sold by the reel or by the foot, and comes in three color temperatures. In a home, 2700k (aka “Soft White”) is almost always the safest choice. Most LED strips seem to start at a cooler 3000k. Flexfire’s specs say their warm white ranges from 2700k – 3200k. It’s not clear why the range is given. Is it marketing or is the binning of the LED chips that wide? In any case, this particular strip appears to be at the high end of the stated range, probably at least 3000k. I’d prefer slightly warmer white, but I think these will work well in the kitchen.

For test purposes, I hooked up a 300-watt, 12-volt Magnitude constant-voltage LED driver and a Lutron Diva DVLV-600P dimmer. Both products are frequently recommended for this application, so for my proof-of-concept test I decided not to venture off the beaten path.

For initial power-up, I set the dimmer to its lowest and turned it on. I was surprised by the initial surge of nearly full brightness, followed quickly by dimming to about the lowest practical setting. The surge is slightly annoying, but not necessarily a deal breaker. The dimmer works perfectly throughout its range, although there is some barely perceptible flicker at some levels. Perhaps that’s caused by PWM? I’d like to try another dimmer. The Lutron is clicky and has an ugly neon lamp under the switch paddle to help find it in the dark.

I may end up using these at full brightness most of the time. My old Xenon under-cabinet kitchen lighting was rated at 177 lumens/foot; This strip is rated 402 lumens/foot. I reasoned that the LED strip should be incredibly bright at about 50%, and with reduced brightness it should last nearly forever. It will be interesting to see if that works out or not. After all, is it possible to have too much light in the kitchen?

At maximum brightness, the LED strip gets too warm to touch for prolonged periods. I can see now why Flexfire didn’t want me using a cover lens on this product. Any additional heat would lead to premature death.

In summary, I’m impressed with this product, but not blown away yet. I’ll post an update once I’ve been able to test it while positioned over a countertop.